A Day on an Island of the Sea.
I will try to tell the Table something about one of the islands of our coast, namely, St. Helena. It is a large island, and on it is grown that famous sea-island cotton valuable on account of its long fibre. St. Helena is now almost wholly peopled by colored folk, not a few of whom were once slaves. They are not equal to the raising of island cotton of so long fibre as are the white growers; but in almost every other respect they do exceedingly well at imitating the successful methods of their former masters.
They have divided the island into small farms. These the more prosperous have purchased, and, what is equally important, they are paying for them. A few years ago they thought they had reached a wonderful degree of progress because they were able to begin putting glass into their house windows. Since then they have adopted other improvements, such as lamps, and even modern ploughs and other field implements. These negroes chiefly raise vegetables for the Northern markets, and I doubt not that not a few vegetables which you have bought early in the season, and paid a high price for, were grown on this island of the sea.
The negroes of St. Helena have one quaint superstition, which some, but not all cling to yet. It is that if a child be carried from a house while asleep, its spirit remains behind beckoning the child back. The negroes here, as in many other parts of the South, will not work on Saturdays, and cannot by any inducement be made to do so. This comes from an old custom of slavery times, when Saturdays were devoted to clearing up the negro cabins, and then a holiday.
Lucy H. Emory.
Beaufort, S. C.